| created | 2026-01-23 |
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January 23, 2026
1972 — Smalltalk created at Xerox PARC by Alan Kay, Dan Ingalls, and Adele Goldstein
1980 — Smalltalk-80 released publicly; becomes dominant dynamic OO language
1984 — David Ungar completes Berkeley PhD on Smalltalk performance (Generation Scavenging GC)
1986 — Randall B. Smith creates Alternate Reality Kit at Xerox PARC — prototype-based predecessor to Self
1985 — Ungar joins Smith at Xerox PARC; they begin designing Self
1986 — Self language design completed at PARC
1987 — Ungar moves to Stanford as assistant professor; implementation begins with graduate students Craig Chambers and Urs Hölzle
1987 — First Self compiler completed
1987 — "Self: The Power of Simplicity" published at OOPSLA — later named one of three most influential OOPSLA papers (1986–1996)
1989 — "An Efficient Implementation of Self" published — introduces maps (hidden classes)
1990 — Self publicly released
1991 — "Polymorphic Inline Caches" paper published at ECOOP by Hölzle, Chambers, and Ungar
1991 — Self project moves to Sun Microsystems Labs; Lars Bak and Mario Wolczko join the team
1992 — Craig Chambers completes PhD thesis on Self compiler
1993 — Morphic UI framework developed by John Maloney and Randall B. Smith
1994 — Urs Hölzle completes PhD thesis "Adaptive Optimization for Self" — foundational work on type feedback and deoptimization
1995 — Self 4.0 released with redesigned programming environment
1995 — Java launched; Sun redirects resources away from Self
1995 — Self project officially ends at Sun
1993 — NewtonScript created for Apple Newton PDA — adopts Self's prototype model
1993 — Lua 1.0 released — later adopts Self-style delegation via metatables
1995 — JavaScript created by Brendan Eich at Netscape — directly adopts Self's prototype-based inheritance
1994 — Hölzle and Bak co-found Animorphic Systems; build Strongtalk VM using Self techniques
1997 — Sun acquires Animorphic Systems
1999 — Java HotSpot VM released — directly derived from Self/Strongtalk technology
2002 — Io language created by Steve Dekorte — explicitly inspired by Self
2006 — Google hires Lars Bak to build Chrome's JavaScript engine
2008 — V8 JavaScript engine released — implements Self's hidden classes, inline caches, and adaptive optimization
2006 — Self 4.3 released (first release in 11 years)
2010 — Self 4.4 released with Linux support by community maintainers
2017 — Self 2017.1 released (new versioning scheme)
August 2024 — Self 2024.1 released with FreeBSD and NetBSD support
Present — Self maintained on GitHub; V8 and HotSpot continue to use Self's optimization techniques in billions of devices worldwide